Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pessimizer | Hacker News Reader

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Remoaners still don't acknowledge how psychotically they were whipped up over this. But they still talk about the dumb lying bus that the people driving admitted was wrong like 5 minutes after being confronted about it.

They were predicting Mad Max, and they still call the Brexiteers dumb.

That being said, the UK had an good deal in the EU, access to the markets without having to accept the dumb currency. which is why the EU played so rough with them, and is generally better off for them having left.

The problem is that the UK being between France and Germany, maybe because English is an unholy combination of French and German, was a stabilizing influence. When Europe finally faces the fact that they're no match for Russia and should just leave it alone, there will be nothing left but to turn on each other again. I suppose the winner can invade Russia again and lose, again.

But the fantasy that this stupid trade union meant that much was a collective elite hysteria. They couldn't just admit that they just liked to be able to travel and work in Europe like they were at home, because they knew most people couldn't actually afford to do that. Also, they loved the cheap labor, and that's another embarrassing thing to say out loud.

> the UK being between France and Germany ... was a stabilizing influence.

I don't see that at all. The EU was a Franco-German project. De Gaul kept the British out as long as he could because he thought they'd be destabilising, and he was correct.

The UK was always a bit of an odd man out in the EU in that for them it was always "The EU is doing this or that" whether good or bad. For the central European countries it's "We are doing this or that" because they ARE the EU. If only the UK could have seen themselves as part of it. Your comment follows a similar vein, they're not going to turn on each other so easily. Not yet. The European project means far too much to the French and Germans, far more than it ever did the the British.

I'm ex-pat British, I've lived in Europe, although I now live elsewhere. I personally think brexit was a bad move, but I don't really believe it had much to do with the EU anyway. It's discontent because things aren't working well for a lot of people at the moment, and nobody in politics is offering a path to anything better.

There is a lot of incoherence in this reply but I'll just address the second last: that less well-off people were more likely to vote for Brexit. Not only is this narrative just a thin veneer over the "sons of the soil", anti-immigrant narrative, the peddlers of Brexit were handing out, there is actual data showing that in fact the opposite was true.

From a Bank of England study:

> People living in left-behind areas were more likely to support Brexit than those living in prosperous areas. The gains of Brexit were perceived to be greater in areas of the country that had experienced economic decline. But within those areas, given people's preferences, we show that wealthier individuals were more likely to vote for Brexit, and poorer individuals were more likely to vote for Remain.

ref. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/study-finds-wealthy-more-likely-t...

> One thing we can be reasonably confident of is that small UK firms appear to be more adversely affected than larger ones. > > They have been less able to cope with the new post-Brexit cross-border bureaucracy. That's supported by surveys of small firms.

ref. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrynjz1glpo

All this is not hard to reason yourself out of. The wealthy can afford to go to Europe regardless of whether UK remains integrated with the EU. They are the least affected by decision either way. The less well-to-do have significant costs imposed now that the integration is over - both monetary and bureaucratic whenever they want to deal with the EU. This is despite the free trade deal.

I think your map might be upside down... It's not Europe invading Russia.

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